Being the first film in the successful movie franchise, Lethal Weapon is not just a classic action film, but it’s also a Christmas film as well. The film centers around two L.A.P.D. detectives who are reluctantly partnered together in order to solve a murder that was disguised as a suicide.

Roger Murtaugh (Glover) is an aging officer who has just celebrated his fiftieth birthday and is looking forward to an early retirement. Martin Riggs (Gibson) is a burnt out, borderline psychotic officer who is grieving over the recent death of his wife.

After an undercover drug bust in which Riggs’ life was in jeopardy, Riggs’ superiors have him transferred to homicide where he is partnered with Murtaugh who is aware of Riggs’ illustrious reputation. Both men see this new partnership as an inconvenience and are less than thrilled to work with one another.

As we told you previously, Kiefer Sutherland is returning to TV after a break to do some plays and will be starring in Fox’s new Tim Kring created drama Touch. Now we’re happy to report that Sutherland won’t be alone in the series.

According to reports, the former 24 star will be joined by Lethal Weapon‘s own Danny Glover in the new show. Glover will play Arthur DeWitt, a professor and expert on children who possess special gifts when it comes to numbers.

Obviously, from what we know about the show so far, he will probably work with Sutherland’s character and his son who can predict events before they happen. Sounds like a pretty killer crimefighting team.

I wonder if Sutherland’s character will end up shooting anyone in the leg? Maybe we’ll just have to wait for the 24 movie to see that. Until then look for Touch to debut midseason if Fox decides to pick it up after seeing the pilot.

With Sutherland’s track record for the network and Glover’s appeal to Roger Murtaugh fans everywhere, I would bet we’ll see this show get picked up. If only Tim Kring wasn’t involved. Oh well, that probably means the show will be good for the first season and then turn to crap.

This week’s pick is a salute to U.S. Navy pilots during the Vietnam War with director John Milius’s (Red Dawn, The Wind and the Lion, Rough Riders) Flight of the Intruder (1991), which was based on the novel written by former A-6 pilot Stephen Coonts. The film stars Brad Johnson (Lt. Jake ‘Cool Hand’ Grafton), Danny Glover (Cmd. Frank ‘Dooke’ Camparelli), and Willem Dafoe (Lt. Cmd. Virgil ‘Tiger’ Cole).

The title of the film is based on the A-6 Intruder which was an all weather, low altitude, twin jet engine bomber which was the U.S. Navy’s workhorse throughout the Vietnam conflict. Its primary function was to destroy road junctions, radar and missile installations, and to assist ground troops in combat.

The bomber had no defensive weapons and was vulnerable to other attack aircraft. Certain variations of the fighter are still in use today with the U.S. Navy and it is considered to be one of the finest attack aircraft ever produced for the American military.

The film opens with news audio clips of American involvement in Vietnam since the mid 1960s and how the war has escalated to a standstill, especially for pilots who are restricted to enter North Vietnamese airspace since 1968 during the final months of Lydon B. Johnson’s presidential term.

The latest release from WWE Studios, Legendary stars WWE star and corporate mascot John Cena alongside Patricia Clarkson, Devon Graye and Danny Glover in the most heartfelt film the company has been a part of. Devon plays the role of Cal Chetley, a target for bullies in his small Oklahoma town, who lives with his mother Sharon (Clarkson).

Against his mother’s wishes, Cal decides to join the high school wrestling team despite his small stature as a way to reconnect with the father he barely knew and the brother Mike (Cena) he has rarely seen in the past ten years. Down on his luck and filled with self-loathing, Mike reluctantly begins to train his brother in the ways that made him a championship wrestler which ultimately helps bridge the gap between the two.

It’s hard to hear the premise of Legendary and not begin to see correlations to Rudy. An undersized kid trying to make it in a sport based on physical superiority and muscle mass that only has his heart helping push him forward. Thankfully, WWE Studios pushed past a story just about high school wrestling and added a layer to Cal Chetley and his new obsession.

As a result, there is a lot of emotion behind everything happening that doesn’t feel like a Rudy ripoff. This young man didn’t always dream of being a high school championship wrestler. He just sees it as a way to connect to a past and a family that is so far away from him.

The relationship between older brother Mike and mother Sharon is also incredibly well done. The few times they are on screen together is incredibly uncomfortable as Sharon appears to be in physical pain from being in front of a son that has chosen to stay out of her life for so many years that she never forgave for something that wasn’t even his fault. The deeply conflicted Mike also has some great scenes when he is apart from his family that show just how much his grief has consumed his life.

“A Western like you’ve never seen before … An exciting new look at the Old West.”

Oh, taglines. I like when you do my work for me. You just described what Silverado isn’t!

I’ve had this one on my queue for quite awhile. I’ve anticipated it greatly. It was written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, who is no slouch with pulp-oriented films like The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark to his credit. If there’s one thing Kasdan knows, it’s action adventure, right? Not when it came to Silverado, a film that misses the mark so often that I fail to see how it’s garnered 2-disc collector sets and such enthusiasm among Western fans.

I suppose it’s all due to Costner. Little baby Costner. This is the film that made him a star and a dreamy genre successor to John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. They seem to have costumed him with that very idea, because he’s wearing a variation on every famous Western and cowboy look ever filmed.

At one point, he even wears a serape. He’s a weird, goofy character — I can’t tell if he’s special or just supposed to be extremely young — and the highlight of the film is undoubtedly when he decides his horse needs to wear a hat. It just comes out of nowhere. Costner walks down the street, happy as a clam, and his horse is wearing a cowboy hat.

There are several things that director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) doesn’t seem too concerned about in the bloated, CGI-laden disaster movie 2012. These include, but are not limited to: plot, character development, plausibility, restraint, and subtlety. I kind of understand why he chooses to ignore these elements. If you get bogged down with all these pesky details, how are you supposed to focus on THE SPECTACLE?

THE SPECTACLE is the star of this film, and clearly every resource available was used to ensure that this movie looks good, everything else be damned. 2012 is a full 2 1/2 hour visual assault of CGI, destruction, chase scenes, and every natural disaster a geophysicist could possibly imagine. It’s chalk full of action movie clichés, right down to the brooding and estranged ex-husband who happens to be near his old family when disaster strikes, and must lead them to safety. Not only is the movie wholly unoriginal, but it actually feels like Emmerich just cherry-picked his favorite scenes from action movies he likes, and found a way to throw them all into a threadbare story.

This is director indulgence gone too far. The movie is an hour too long, and a few key scenes would have had far more impact if there were not an action scene thrown in every 3-4 minutes. It’s as though Emmerich is saying to the audience: “You are going to sit there in your seat, and you are going to watch the crap out of this movie.”

While most disaster movies of late have gone the way of the Poseidon Adventure remake, there has been some positive buzz about the newest “the world is ending” film, 2012. Though the film is getting a November release (most disaster movies are known to do better during the summer) and has 10,000 BC’s Roland Emmerich at the helm, we do have some hope.

From what we know, the film focuses on the main character and his family on a microcosmic level as ancient prophecies come true. The world begins to literally fall apart around us, as the Earth has an expiration date of 2012. The tagline of the film is simply “We Were Warned,” which hopefully has nothing to do with the actual production of the movie and its resultant quality.

Writer Herald Kloser helped with the epic script and the film stars, in no particular order, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, Oliver Platt, and Amanda Peet. Check out brand new footage and dialogue in the Japanese trailer after the jump.

Expect the world to end as we know it, at least according to 2012, on November 13.

We haven’t posted all that much about Roland Emmerich’s epic disaster movie 2012 here at the site because it doesn’t really look all that good. There was a punchy little trailer about a month back, which we posted for your viewing pleasure, but that didn’t really raise our expectations. Thankfully, the friendly folks at i09 put together this lovely remix of the trailer, to show off it’s true nature, and help us all comprehend how ridiculous the movie really looks.

For those still thinking optimistically, the film is written and directed by Roland Emmerich, who brought us such films as 10,000 BC and The Day After Tomorrow. According to IMDB, the movie is “an epic adventure about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggle of the survivors.”

Those survivors include such names as John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Thandie Newton, Woody Harrelson, Oliver Platt, and Danny Glover. 2012 hits screens November 13 of this year.